Philippines suspends trade with NoKor

MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines has suspended trade relations with North Korea to comply with a United Nations Security Council resolution over Pyongyang’s defiance of international calls to abandon its nuclear program and for its repeated ballistic missile testing, Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said on Friday. 

“We can say we have suspended trade relations with North Korea,” Cayetano told reporters after a meeting with United States Ambassador to the Philippines Sung Kim on cooperation on an anti-drugs program.

Cayetano said the Department of Foreign Affairs has received instruction from Malacañang to support the UN Security Council resolutions against Pyongyang, which include the imposition of economic sanctions; however, he did not specify products that the country would stop exporting to North Korea, but said the sanction is “immediate.”

The Philippines is North Korea’s fifth largest trade partner, with bilateral trade from January to June this year worth $28.8 million, according to the state-run Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency.

On an annual basis, North Korea imported $28.8 million worth of products from the Philippines in 2016, an increase of 80 percent from the previous year, while Manila’s imports from Pyongyang surged 170 percent to $16.1 million.

According to the Department of Trade and Industry, the main exports to North Korea in 2015 were computers, integrated circuited boards, bananas and women’s undergarments.

“I can tell you 100 percent we are one with the world in wanting denuclearization in the Korean Peninsula. We are against anything that causes instability, we are against provocation, we are for dialogue,” Cayetano said. “The UN Security Council is quite clear. Part of these are the economic sanctions and the Philippines will comply.” – With Reuters